We Can Rebuild Her……..we think

I’ve had some interesting jobs in my lifetime. I’ve worked almost steadily since the age of 16 up until now. The only time I didn’t have a job was during the 6 months I was at Stockton College in NJ and while I was at The Restaurant School. Well technically I did work when I was at The Restaurant School, I just didn’t get paid for it. Anywho, my first job was working for the Summer Housing Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Say what now? Yeah I know not your typical job for a teenager, but I liked it. I got the job because of my mom, she worked at UPenn in the Academic Housing department. I basically grew up on that campus. When I was little I used to love walking through the mini parks they had scattered around the campus. All of her co-workers loved me and I loved tagging along with them whenever my mom was busy. Kind of funny that outside of my mom and her best friend Ms. Jean these were the only people who called me by my full first name instead of my nickname. I think they just loved saying my name I don’t know.

This is the high rise my mom worked in….Hi Academic Housing!!

As a kid I had no clue what my mom’s job really meant, all I knew was she worked in a high rise and dealt with a lot of cranky people all day. There’s a difference between middle class cranky and rich cranky. When I turned 16 my mom thought it was time for me to get a job. Since I was so familiar with the UPenn campus, it just seemed natural that I should work there too. Basically me and my friend Melissa would push this big old bin on wheels from high rise to high rise. They’d give us a list of the rooms that needed to be checked on and we were on our way. Had all the essentials we needed for cleaning the rooms and whatnot stuffed in that wheely bin. Here’s where it gets interesting….it’s amazing the things people leave behind. So we’d go into these rooms the summer semester students were using and run through the list. Making notes about damage to the room, cleaning it up, taking the linens and dumping them in bags so they could be washed, and leaving clean linens behind. Some of the rooms weren’t too bad. But other ones look like someone had a rave the night before. College kids arenasty! And they would leave behind things that were either cool, broken or just oh-my-god-you’re-seven-types-of-nasty. Rich kids don’t care what condition the things they leave behind are in, they can just replace them the next day. So we’ve seen lamps, radios, dishes, clothes, shoes, books, used condoms. All types of random things left behind. I only worked during the summer because my mom was worried about me keeping my grades up. But I worked there two summers in a row. It was a fun, interesting job to say the least. But it made me thankful for the things I had, and made me want to work harder for the things I wanted.

No clue what the name is for this art piece so mom and I called it The Dueling Tampons